|
I'm not claiming to be an expert in game design or that I have a better perspective of judging game balance than Blizzard does. When I look at balance patch 1.1.2, I like all the intentions that they had and the direction they are going with the patch. The changes also seem drastic overall, when other more elegant solutions may have been available.
I like patch changes that add to the strategic depth of the game and take as little away from it as possible. I look at the changes to reaper speed, the void ray nerfs, and the depot before rax prerequisite and I feel like everything is just becoming streamlined and dumbed down. Why can't they accomplish the same things without limiting strategy? They're solutions seem uncreative and dull to me.
Let's take an example of how we can nerf something but compensate by adding some sort of decision making or strategy involved with the change. Let's say instead of lowering the void ray speed they could have changed how the upgrade worked all together. What happened if the flux vanes upgrade was an ability that when you activated it, would give the void ray a speed increase equal to pre-patch 1.1.2. This would drain it's energy (at a rate faster than banshee cloaking or medivac heal rates) and the speed booster mode would be enabled. It would work similar to how the stamina bar worked in Diablo 2.
This would also compensate for the fact that 2 units who you could feedback were changed to cool down units in the new patch by adding a new unit to feedback, albeit it would be in PvP. Sorry for ranting everyone, but I feel like these changes could had been way more subtle and delicate than changing fundamental game mechanics and dropping 2 nerfs on one unit in the same patch before seeing for a little bit how the first nerf goes.
Shit I almost forgot about the building HP buff.... a direct side effect of marauders being way too effective. Another example of uncreative balancing. Why do they insist on changing core aspects of the game while ignoring the source of the problem?
Here are some creative ways to fix the problem instead of adding 500 HP (not a small amount by any means) to a building. I mean seriously, if you have to add that much health to any unit or building and the games not in beta anymore, something bigger is amiss.
Choose any:
1. -1 range on Marauder. Concussive shells now add 1+ range in addition to snare, cost adjusted to 100/100
2. Stim cost adjusted to 150/150 (not creative but not limiting strategy either because people would still get stim anyways, it's that good).
3. -25 Hp. Marine shields now also give marauders +20 HP.
(Yeah I know I love upgrades) Now you may be pointing out that I didn't even touch the damage, but I feel as if subtle changes like this still impact the overall effectiveness of a unit or strategy. I don't know, I'm not a game designer by any means but I just feel as if adding HP to buildings for all 3 races is side stepping the deeper issue.
 
|
+20 HP on marauders I think is way to much. Since they soak up a good amount of dmg already.
|
On October 16 2010 15:21 Stretsful wrote:
+20 HP on marauders I think is way to much.
Yeah that number is just a rough estimate and could be tweaked as seem fit by others.
Edit: Just to make it clear I was talking about removing 25 hp from the marauder and then the shields adding back 20.
|
I like that idea with the marauder hp change using the upgrade. Keeps them strong enough for late game whilst balancing the early game.
|
The -range would be okay, I guess. I want Marauders to be in front of my Marines to tank damage anyway and I suppose it would be nice to have them do it themselves with no further micro from me. Plus they have Concussive Shells so it's not like once they've hit something they're going to have a problem hitting it again.
|
On October 16 2010 15:49 .Aar wrote:
The -range would be okay, I guess. I want Marauders to be in front of my Marines to tank damage anyway and I suppose it would be nice to have them do it themselves with no further micro from me. Plus they have Concussive Shells so it's not like once they've hit something they're going to have a problem hitting it again.
Well the idea would be to have the +1 range come back with concussive shells. So in that circumstance, they actually would have a problem hitting their targets again. It would require micro still, just different positioning at first.
|
Because the problem wasn't 'marauders are too good', it was 'nexus's die too quickly to marauders'. Where your suggestions fall short is that they are broad ranging solutions to small problems, which will overlap into other situations that marauders are just fine.
The problem was that people would drop or use small marauder forces to pick off nexus's ridiculously quickly. Little snipes like this should not be able to do that! They should be able to pick off workers, pylons and MAYBE a tech building. Not an HQ. Now it's going to be much harder to snipe HQ's if the protoss is paying attention. Yeah, occasionally I'll crack through that shields/hp with my small marauder group but now we can confidently state it was a lapse in the
protoss player, not a balance issue.
It's kinda like saying "I think increasing hatchery and Lair health is a bad way to fix tank drops on Lost temple. Instead we should just make dropships dropping an upgradable research from the tech lab". Well, no. That's one situation where a medivac is really good, now why should that affect all the other situations?
The other problem is that dropships with marauders in them were being crazy good, so they nerfed dropship speed considerably (they get out-run by stalkers now, making dropping more dangerous)
Blizzard made the right choice. Just nerfing marauders would be been stupid. They aren't the problem in this MU and people should stop talking about them in that way. They NEED to be as good at killing ground targets as they are. Blizzard fixed the problems with marauders which was they sniped nexus's and dropped people like crazy, and they fixed them without chaning anything about the marauder which was the right thing to do.
What I don't like about the patch was the void ray nerf and the reaper speed nerf. Those sucked. Voids should of just had vs non-armoured reduced a bit at their charged up level (because the rate they killed marines was crazy good). I think the flux vanes thing was for team games, which I'm ok with because no-one got that ability in 1v1's anyway. No big deal there.
|
edit- oops, double post. Hit quote instead of edit ><
|
On October 16 2010 16:29 iaguz wrote:
Because the problem wasn't 'marauders are too good', it was 'nexus's die too quickly to marauders'. Where your suggestions fall short is that they are broad ranging solutions to small problems, which will overlap into other situations that marauders are just fine.
The problem was that people would drop or use small marauder forces to pick off nexus's ridiculously quickly. Little snipes like this should not be able to do that! They should be able to pick off workers, pylons and MAYBE a tech building. Not an HQ. Now it's going to be much harder to snipe HQ's if the protoss is paying attention. Yeah, occasionally I'll crack through that shields/hp with my small marauder group but now we can confidently state it was a lapse in the
protoss player, not a balance issue.
It's kinda like saying "I think increasing hatchery and Lair health is a bad way to fix tank drops on Lost temple. Instead we should just make dropships dropping an upgradable research from the tech lab". Well, no. That's one situation where a medivac is really good, now why should that affect all the other situations?
The other problem is that dropships with marauders in them were being crazy good, so they nerfed dropship speed considerably (they get out-run by stalkers now, making dropping more dangerous)
Blizzard made the right choice. Just nerfing marauders would be been stupid. They aren't the problem in this MU and people should stop talking about them in that way. They NEED to be as good at killing ground targets as they are. Blizzard fixed the problems with marauders which was they sniped nexus's and dropped people like crazy, and they fixed them without chaning anything about the marauder which was the right thing to do.
What I don't like about the patch was the void ray nerf and the reaper speed nerf. Those sucked. Voids should of just had vs non-armoured reduced a bit at their charged up level (because the rate they killed marines was crazy good). I think the flux vanes thing was for team games, which I'm ok with because no-one got that ability in 1v1's anyway. No big deal there.
Interesting points but to me it seems as though adding HP to buildings was a broad nerf. All the units that were too good at sniping buildings became just right but all the units that were just right to mediocre at sniping buildings will be indirectly effected as well. It just shifts the problem.
|
So? By the nature of the game it is almost impossible to make a change that affects a small situation and only that situation. Name anything short of a 'marauders do less damage to nexus's' change that would fix that issue without changing anything else.
You can't.
This was the best way to do it.
Besides, nexus's and hatcheries were quite fragile compared to CC's anyway. CC's can lift or grow massive 'fuck-off' cannons, and they can be mass repaired. Fair change imo.
|
I think blizzards changes are subtle and yours are major in comparison.
Adding ability = major
slightly change speed = subtle
|
On October 16 2010 18:37 Patriot.dlk wrote:
I think blizzards changes are subtle and yours are major in comparison.
Adding ability = major
slightly change speed = subtle
Maybe moderate is a better choice of wording that subtle. I'm strictly speaking in terms of effectiveness here.
|
I'd like to see more range and speed upgrades...
|
On October 16 2010 17:05 kidcrash wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2010 16:29 iaguz wrote:
Because the problem wasn't 'marauders are too good', it was 'nexus's die too quickly to marauders'. Where your suggestions fall short is that they are broad ranging solutions to small problems, which will overlap into other situations that marauders are just fine.
The problem was that people would drop or use small marauder forces to pick off nexus's ridiculously quickly. Little snipes like this should not be able to do that! They should be able to pick off workers, pylons and MAYBE a tech building. Not an HQ. Now it's going to be much harder to snipe HQ's if the protoss is paying attention. Yeah, occasionally I'll crack through that shields/hp with my small marauder group but now we can confidently state it was a lapse in the
protoss player, not a balance issue.
It's kinda like saying "I think increasing hatchery and Lair health is a bad way to fix tank drops on Lost temple. Instead we should just make dropships dropping an upgradable research from the tech lab". Well, no. That's one situation where a medivac is really good, now why should that affect all the other situations?
The other problem is that dropships with marauders in them were being crazy good, so they nerfed dropship speed considerably (they get out-run by stalkers now, making dropping more dangerous)
Blizzard made the right choice. Just nerfing marauders would be been stupid. They aren't the problem in this MU and people should stop talking about them in that way. They NEED to be as good at killing ground targets as they are. Blizzard fixed the problems with marauders which was they sniped nexus's and dropped people like crazy, and they fixed them without chaning anything about the marauder which was the right thing to do.
What I don't like about the patch was the void ray nerf and the reaper speed nerf. Those sucked. Voids should of just had vs non-armoured reduced a bit at their charged up level (because the rate they killed marines was crazy good). I think the flux vanes thing was for team games, which I'm ok with because no-one got that ability in 1v1's anyway. No big deal there.
Interesting points but to me it seems as though adding HP to buildings was a broad nerf. All the units that were too good at sniping buildings became just right but all the units that were just right to mediocre at sniping buildings will be indirectly effected as well. It just shifts the problem.
But units that aren't too good at sniping buildings were never meant to snipe buildings. And either way that's not really the point. Sniping nexuses and zerg tech buildings was just too easy, so they had to raise it.
Shit I almost forgot about the building HP buff.... a direct side effect of marauders being way too effective. Another example of uncreative balancing. Why do they insist on changing core aspects of the game while ignoring the source of the problem?
Since when is building health more of a core aspect than the stats to a fundamental unit? Actually since when is a ~300 HP discrepancy to a building the core aspect of anything?
I think this sums it up best though
Because the problem wasn't 'marauders are too good', it was 'nexus's die too quickly to marauders'. Where your suggestions fall short is that they are broad ranging solutions to small problems, which will overlap into other situations that marauders are just fine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
